Brit survivor of Chile blizzard that killed Cheryl Tweedy’s ex-aide reveals one hiker was ALIVE when rescuers got to her

A SURVIVOR of the Chile snowstorm which killed Cheryl Tweedy’s British ex-aide and four others has revealed one hiker was alive when rescuers first reached her.

Christian Aldridge was a pal of Victoria Bond, 40, who died in Monday’s 120mph whiteout in Patagonia – after mountain staff allegedly reassured them all was fine.

Five bodies were recovered on Tuesday after the powerful snowstorm bulldozed the Torres del Paine National Park.

Christian, 41, told Sky News‘s UK Tonight with Sarah-Jane Mee that he is “devastated” by the loss of his friend.

He revealed that locals volunteers used a homemade stretcher for the grim task of retrieving the bodies the next day.

But one of them still showed signs of life.

Christian said: “They recovered one of [the hikers] and she was still alive at the time and brought her down on a homemade stretcher that the rest of us in the camp made from sleeping mats, polystyrene and walking poles.”

There were medics among the volunteers and they immediately tried to help the dying the hiker, but she went into hypothermic cardiac arrest.

Despite being shocked twice with a defibrillator and the volunteers working on her for over an hour, she didn’t make it through.

Reflecting on the aftermath of the tragedy, Christian said: “We’re relieved to be alive, of course, but devastated because we’ve lost one of our best friends and one of the most amazing people I’ve met.

“And we’re all carrying around with us a huge amount of grief, shock and guilt.

“We keep replaying everything that happened that day and asking, what could we have done differently? And it’s overwhelming and it still doesn’t feel real.”

A group of British friends had been trekking Chile’s demanding Circuit O which Christian claims they were told was still safe despite forecasts of winds strong enough “to be classified as a tropical storm.”

Other members of the crew reportedly included Hayley Newnham, 41, a PR agency owner, sports coach developer Matt Smith39, and Tom Player, 39, a composer from London.

Tom has also spoken out in the aftermath, and said it was the first time he’d ever seen a dead body.

He said he found Mexican hiker Julian Garcia Pimentel “lying on his front with his eyes wide open” in the storm.

He had already been searching for his friend Victoria.

Tom told the Daily Mail: “There were so many failures on top of each other that led to this. It’s a tragedy that should have been avoided.

“They could have just said, ‘sorry, it’s closed today’, which they later did but only because they were dead bodies on there, not because they were worried about people’s safety.”

‘We trusted them’

Multiple trekkers allege that campsite staff and park rangers told them it was safe to go up despite forecasts of winds strong enough “to be classified as a tropical storm”.

Maeve, an experienced hiker from California, said: “These [staff] from Chile… did not suggest that we don’t go, we trusted them. We figured they were encouraging us to go.”

Tom said he was shown the forecast at Los Perros camp and told: “Oh, it’s normal.”

Instead, climbers walked straight into a nightmare, with a blinding whiteout, sheet ice and gusts so intense they had to crawl.

Christian, a British TV and film director, previously said: “Most of the time I was thinking, ‘Oh, this is where we die’.

“It was pretty terrifying. I slid down the mountain once at a very high speed and I couldn’t stop.”

He recalled hikers were knocked over, blasted in the face by ice, and left unable to look up.

“People couldn’t see in front or behind,” he added.

Survivors claimed many lacked proper gear after being reassured conditions were fine.

Some trekkers had no gloves, so frostbite and hypothermia spread quickly.

And as conditions collapsed, groups merged for safety.